Page 42

Awareness pricks the back of my neck. Slowly, I turn.

Michail is striding up the street, his eyes fixed on me. One of the boys playing shouts, then lobs the ball toward Michail. He looks away and catches the ball with an athletic ease that has my breath catching. A younger boy, no more than four, runs up andrandomly hugs him about the waist. Michail freezes. Uncertainty crosses his face, followed by an emotion so raw it makes my heart ache. He returns the hug with one arm, pressing the boy against his side for a moment before an older child comes over to take the ball and pull the boy away, scolding him in Greek. The boy looks back at Michail and waves.

Michail waves. And then his eyes find mine again. As I stand there on the pavestones, with the morning sun threading strands of gold through his dark brown hair, my heart thuds. I can feel myself slipping ever closer to that emotional edge, toward the same cliff my mother warned me time and time again to stay away from. I should be longing for a man who’s safe, stable, dependable. One who will care for me but who I can live without should the worst come to pass.

Not a man who will command not just my body but my heart and soul, even as he keeps his own just out of reach.

I know all this. But it doesn’t stop my pulse from racing nor my heart from crying out as Michail draws close.

I resist the urge to step back. “How did you get here so quickly?”

“I’ve been looking for you for half an hour.”

Warmth clashes with trepidation. “Why?”

His jaw tenses. “Alessandra—”

“You found her!”

A young woman steps out of the doorway, her smile broad and her eyes sparkling as she looks between Michail and me. It takes a moment for me to remember her as the waitress who served me that night.

“Excuse me?”

“He was looking for you.” The woman points at Michail. “A few months ago. He came in the morning after you were here and asked if we knew who you were.” She clasps her hands in front of her chest. “I’m so glad you found one another!”

I don’t dare look around. How can I when my heart is thundering so hard in my chest it feels like it’s going to break free?

“Thank you.” Michail’s voice sounds closer. “We’re fortunate to have found each other again.”

Hysterical laughter bubbles in my throat, but I bite it back. Michail’s shoes whisper over the pavestones as he walks up behind me and places a hand at my lower back.

“Perhaps we’ll be able to stop by for another drink before we leave.”

The young woman beams, oblivious to the tension between us. “We open at five. I hope you’ll join us.”

She disappears back inside. The children must have gone somewhere else, because there’s no more high-pitched chatter, no thuds of a ball being thrown. There’s just us, Michail and me, outside the bar where it all began.

My thoughts are a kaleidoscope, tumbling and twirling as I try to make sense of what the woman just revealed against Michail’s rejection of me last night. His hand moves up my back, his fingertips sliding along my spine. I lean into his touch even though I know I should be walking away.

Slowly, Michail turns me to face him. He drops his hand and takes a step back, his shoulders tense.

“I came here to Santorini because Lucifer invited me.”

His voice is flat, his eyes cold. But I know that at least in this moment, it’s not directed at me. It’s the only way for him to talk about something so incredibly painful. I wait with bated breath, torn between hoping he’ll confide in me and being terrified of what that will mean for us. What it will mean if he gives me a part of himself.

“Growing up, I was so angry that I didn’t have a father. The reality of it hit me for the first time in kindergarten when our teacher had us make Father’s Day cards. I told her I didn’t have afather. The teasing started.” His gaze shifts, travels up to the sign over my shoulder. “There was a boy who kept telling me that if I wasn’t such a coward, a pip-squeak, and all the other names that young boys can come up with, my dad would still be around.”

I think about all of the taunts and teasing I suffered in elementary and middle school, usually centered around my love of math, being a geek, not having the right clothes. Nothing so cruel as what Michail suffered, but enough to dig under my skin, to fester over the years and further convince me that alone was best.

“Children can be cruel.”

“It didn’t help that we lived in a crumbling apartment building known for its mold issues, lack of air conditioning and pipes bursting on a semiregular basis. The apartment next to us was known as the place to go to get decent heroin.”

My eyes widen. A blush stings my cheeks as I remember my words last night, venting about an apartment that didn’t always have working appliances. But I never had to worry about things like whether somebody was bringing illegal drugs into the other side of our wall.

“Were there no charities to help?”

“Her parents cut off her health insurance.” The venom in his voice lets me know his relationship with his grandparents is fractured just as badly as mine. “They withdrew their financial support so she was left with a mountain of debt for her partially finished art degree at a very expensive university. Add in the cost of giving birth to me at an inner-city hospital, and she was drowning in debt. I remember going to food banks, but so did thousands of other people.” He shrugs. “We were one of many. Every now and then, when she would come home after midnight, I would see how tired she was. I would remember that kid’s words. I would wonder if I was the reason why my dad didn’t stick around.”